Encounter
by s2lou
Summary: 36 years old Kudo Shinichi opens his door to a young man who reminds him of someone from the past... crappy summary, but who cares?


**Author's note: This is an oneshot but part of a greater pattern in a story – it's an event which occurs quite at the end of it and I will probably relate later on what happened before. The truth is, I thought about this one for months before writing it down so I want it to show up first…**

**Just apply the usual disclaimers to this, I own nothing but Shino. You'll see who that is with reading the story…**

**-**

Encounter

-

I don't even know why I opened my door to this kid.

Because that's what he is: a kid. He's no more than seventeen at the utmost. He showed up, saying he wanted to talk to Kudo Shinichi, and I let him in, God knows why. Now he's watching around in the leaving-room, looking interested.

-

So this is it. Kudo Shinichi.

It's so strange being faced with him at last, after thinking about it a hundred times over. It's like playing a role I repeated for a long time, in an act I don't know the end of.

It's frightening me.

-

Shinichi pushed a cup of tea towards his guest. "What did you say your name was?"

"Shino."

"So, Shino-kun… what did you want to tell me about?"

The kid smiled. "Depends."

"On what?"

"On how much you want to say."

"What are you here for?"

"Asking you questions."

Shinichi smiled and relaxed against his seat. His trained eyes considered the young man before him, the way he sat, the place of his hands, the grave, yet amused look in his deep blue eyes. There was something familiar in his posture, something that came from long ago and that he couldn't quite place.

"You're Japanese," he said slowly, " but you were raised in America. You came back here not so long ago and you now live in the neighbourhood. You're a scholar, probably on vacation, and you've been to the combini two hours ago."

Shino's face brightened. "Incredible," he said softly, with a polite, somehow ironical applause. "Kudo Shinichi. Sherlock Holmes himself. How did you guess that?"

"Simple." Shinichi shrugged – he was tired of having to perform the same tricks every time he met a fan. Times when he enjoyed it proudly were long gone by now. "You're no metis, but there's a slight American accent in your fluent Japanese. Your suntan is obvious, while it's been raining for two weeks here, so I assumed you had arrived only a few days ago. More, there are stains of mud and water on your trousers, which means you came walking, so unless you enjoy strolling under the rain you don't live far. Being only seventeen, I guess, you're obviously a scholar in vacation. As for the combini, there's a ticket with the hour in your pocket – I saw it when you put your hands out to shake mine."

Shino wasn't smiling, or beaming at him, or anything of the kind. He was frowning.

"I see," he said, as if giving a good thought about it. "You really are a fan of Holmes, aren't you? You deduce exactly like he does. I was told so."

"Whom by?"

"… people."

"Do _you_ like Holmes?"

"Very much. I like a _Study in red_ the most."

"Could've told myself," Shinichi mumbled.

"What?" he looked puzzled. "Oh, I see… you think I'm a fan. Well, I'm not. In a way, I'm not."

"What do you mean?" This visit was definitely weird.

"you'll probably figure it out later – ere you a tantei or not? So…" he crossed his legs and tried his best to look serious, "Why did you become a detective?"

Shinichi frowned. "Why do you ask?"

"Answer, that's all."

"Right… I don't really know. my father was – is – a mystery writer and I followed him when he helped police inspectors with cases. I always loved Sherlock Holmes… it was just… natural."

"Do you like it? Being one?"

Shinichi didn't answer immediately. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if remembering memories from a past Shino wasn't aware of. "Let's say that it's my job," he said, shaking his thoughts away, "when it should have remained a passion. I may love it, I'll never be able to forget it took away from me what I love most."

Shino gazed wonderingly at him. "This isn't what I asked you. Why are you telling me all this?"

Shinichi looked up abruptly, as if awaking. He stared for a second, then walked away to the near-by kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.

When he turned around, he was calmer. "I don't really know. Maybe because you remind me of someone I knew – someone who was about your age and was very much like you. But that…" he shook his head sadly, "is another story, way in the past."

"Tell me."

Shinichi started, about to protest – but the kid seemed _dead_ serious. "You won't believe me."

"Does it involve phantoms and magic potions?"

Kudo nearly smiled. "Sort of."

"Well, tell me. I'll stop you when I don't believe you."

Shinichi sighed, sat, and thus began his story of long ago–

"This… guy claimed to be a tantei. At seventeen, he was chasing murderers and putting them behind bars when other teenagers just listened at rock music and played soccer – which he did, too. He was proud and imprudent – he thought he would – could never meet with trouble. But he did. One day, he collapsed with greater-scaled criminals than he was usually confronted to. He was discovered by members of a mafia organization, was knocked down and fed a drug that was meant to kill m– him, but actually didn't. It shrunk him."

"It WHAT?"

"It shrunk him. Into a seven-years-old kid." His resigned eyes met Shino's astounded gaze. "Now you don't believe me."

Shino stopped gaping at him like a fish, swallowed twice and gestured him to go on.

"So it did," Shinichi consequently went on, his voice toneless and monotonous. "The Organization thought he was dead but they would come after him if they learned he was alive. So he had to hide. He made himself a mask, that of a small, innocent child named Edogawa Conan, and found a shelter at his best friend's place. Her Name was Ran. Mouri Ran."

Here was a pause. The name had escaped his lips, and all that came afterwards, for a few minutes, was silence. These dear, long-cherished syllables resounded between the sitting-room walls like a grim phantom of past happy shouts and laughs.

Shino had started a bit, but Shinichi really saw nothing of it – his eyes were staring emptily at his cup of tea. It had been ages since he hadn't said that name anywhere else than on he borders of his mind. Many times, in his most desperate moments, he'd been very close to blurt it out in a fractured sob, and every time had chocked the cries down, swallowing the letters back in his throat.

Behind the closed curtains rain was falling not-quite silently, like a child's repetitive tune.

Shino gathered up his senses and asked shyly, as though, if he spoke too loud, the elder man might shatter to pieces of broken glass, just like his heart had done long ago. "And… did he ever tell her who he was?"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

Shino had expected it, but it hurt anyways. "Why?" his voice was a barely audible whisper.

"Isn't it obvious? Those men could kill someone in cold blood. Another victim… another corpse to get rid of… it would mean nothing to them." He shuddered, as f it had been the object of many a nightmare.

'He loved her so much… he would die rather than see anything happening to her. And he'd never suspected such feelings to dwell in him, before… before it was too late to turn away." His voice broke down then, and he was silent for a few moments, still staring unseeingly at his mug. The tea was probably cold by now. "But time went by, weeks, and months, and years… two long years playing the little brother… _Conan-kun…_ how ironical life is sometimes. Yet, one day, the cure was found. He went back to a grown-up, and into trouble.

"Because now Ran was more endangered than she had ever been when he was Conan. If the Organization ever found out about him… about _her…_

"They had one night together before he told her he couldn't stay by her side anymore. That she needed to forget him. Right when she thought he was back home at last…

"Two weeks later, Ran moved away from Japan with her mother."

Silence struck them then, deep, unbreakable, like an invisible wall.

Shinichi was so calm it seemed unreal.

Shino's hands were shivering. He let go of his cup and laid them flat on his lap. "And they never met again?" he asked shakingly, though the answer was obvious.

"No."

"Not even a call? A letter?"

"No."

A barrier impossible to get over.

"And… about that Organization… did he ever collapse with them again? Did he never defeat them?"

"Yes, he did," Shinichi said grimly. "Ten years later. All its members are in prison by n–"

"Then why did he never call m– Ran back?" Shino almost shouted.

The tantei smiled him the smile of an older, wiser man. "Because ten years were gone – eighteen now. She's probably married, granted with children… as happy as I should ever wish her to be. I only hope she's forgotten."

"What if she hasn't?" Shino said in a low voice.

"What?" For the first time, Shinichi drew up his eyes from the cup of tea.

"What if she had never been able to forget? What if she still loves you, as much as you love her still?"

Shinichi didn't even attempt to deny, one way or another. He just shook his head, and went back at his contemplation, "She must've ended up loathing me. You don't know how I left her… without a word, an explanation, not even a glance. She must've been hurt beyond imagination. I just… went away. She was crying behind me, shouting for me… but I didn't even turn back. There's no day when I don't think about that morning, about her… about the life we could've had together."

For some unknown reason, Shino then smiled broadly. When he spoke again, he was much more at ease.

"What if there had been _something_ - something that kept her from forgetting. A link between your love and hers, that stirred up those feelings of hers."

"What do you mean?" Shinichi asked confusedly.

"You said you'd had one night together. What if, during that night, a miracle had happened?"

His voice dropped a tone lower.

"What if she had fallen pregnant?"

Silence stretched between them like a red thread beyond the limits of time.

Then Shinichi said slowly, "Who are you, kid?"

Shino smiled sadly, "haven't you yet figured it out?"

The rain suddenly resounded _very_ noisily. It hit the window in a harsh way, as if trying to get in and drown them both.

"But you did figure it out," Shino said with a very calm face. "A long time ago. You just didn't want to admit it. So, let me introduce myself… my name is Mouri Shino. Mouri Ran's son. And, incidentally, yours. Nice to meet you."

Another of their long silences. They were beginning used to them – as though it was easier to converse with pauses than with words.

Shinichi was speechless. He just looked at the boy who claimed to be his son, wondering… and wondering again…

"Yeah, but you'll want proof of what I'm saying," the young man sniggered. "What a tantei, right… evidence and everything… well, here… it's my ID card. As you can see, I was born a September 26th, 20– … a bit less than nine months after mom left for America. And here's my birth certificate. Mouri Shino, son of Mouri Ran, father unknown. Those… they're photos of me and mom, from my birth to about six weeks ago. We don't take much pictures in winter, but there should be some of our summer vacation."

He handed the whole bunch of them into Shinichi's hands and folded his arms. He was interested in his father's reaction. Suddenly, the pained, tired man had left his place to a cold, serious detective studying documents.

"I knew nothing about my father until one year ago," he said, more to fill in the silence than actually be listened at. More, he probably needed someone he could talk to about those feelings and months of research, "but for your first name – Shinichi – and that you were Japanese, I'm no metis. For sixteen long years, I grew up fatherless – until that day when I found that box in mom's closet, a box filled with articles and clippings about you. On that day, I discovered that my father was the famous detective Kudo Shinichi, and that mom still loved you. There were photos of you only a few weeks old."

Shinichi said nothing. He stared blankly at the documents in his hands, gazing over the photo's faces, this young boy growing up from three weeks to seventeen, and his mother standing by his side. Ran – it was her, her, wonderfully her, with a sad smile and her still beautiful face.

"Suddenly, my father wasn't a phantom, a stranger anymore, he was a human being, someone real, someone one day or other I would meet. You don't know – you've no idea how many times I invented a father of my own, and talked with a ghost; wondering whether you would react the way I thought you would… after that I could follow you in the papers, I could study the cases you'd solved, feeling joyful every time I heard people talking about you, feeing like screaming, claiming proudly who you were and who I was.

"Then mom talked about coming back to Japan on holiday, said I had to meet grandpa and all that stuff… But all I could think about was you. I've been waiting so long to meet you at last."

Shinichi slammed the documents down. Shino jumped – he'd been talking like in a dream.

"This is all very well," the older man said coldly, "you are Mouri Ran's son. But why should I believe that you are mine too?"

For a brief moment, Shino seemed stone-stunned. Than rage invaded his pupils, and he stood up violently, spilling his tea on the table.

"Are you saying," he shouted, "that mom could have had an adventure with another man at the same time as you – while you know pretty well she's damn in love with you!" He pouted disgustedly. "Evidence! Is that what you need? Well, look here, tantei-san, if you're so clever, look at _this_!"

He'd taken a picture that maid on Shinichi's desk, a picture of himself and Ran when they'd been at Tropical Land on that fateful day nineteen years before.

"Look at you – look at me – and then tell me we're not father and son!"

But Shinichi didn't even have to glance at his own seventeen-years-old self to know that they were perfectly alike.

"Look–" he began, and then stooped and swallowed, obviously exhausted. He stood up, shakingly. "Even if all this is true, then why – w-why did Ran never tell me she – I – we had a son?"

Shino looked exasperated. "I thought you were supposed to be _clever_," he said. "You were the one who let her down, weren't you? She thought you didn't love her anymore – or else, tat you'd never loved her!"

They stood, facing each other, only two inches away, glaring.

Then – Shino's phone rang.

A glance at the screen made him wince. He stepped back, and picking up, "Mom?"

"SHINO! What the hell are you doing? Where ARE you?" Ran's older, furious, yet unmistakable voice bellowed in the earpiece.

Shinichi had never realized what a shock it would be, hearing that voice again. His mind went blank with memories he'd thought – hoped – forgotten, and he felt tears sting at the corners of his eyes.

Shino was on the difficult task of explaining and apologizing at the same time. "Sorry, mom, I didn't warn you – but it's okay, really it is. I'm fine, I'm safe – I'm in one piece. I'm not even far. I'm in the neighbourhood."

"Give me the address and I'll come over immediately to fetch you," his mother informed him angrily.

Shino glanced at his father, who'd grabbed his chair's back not to stumble over the coffee table. "I am… Mom, I'm in the second district, Beika, number 23."

Dead silence at the other end of the line.

When Ran spoke again, her voice was tight with nervousness. "Oh… y-you went to see Hakase, right… ? but he's number 22, Shino, not…"

"Number twenty-three, mom."

Ran forgot to breathe. For a moment that was probably very short but seemed like an eternity, she heard, saw, felt nothing. Her body – if not her mind – was flashed through too many memories of all sorts, some happy, some unhappy – to be able to cope with the situation as it was. She nearly missed her son's newt words, "Sorry, mom – but I had to. You gotta understand – I – I just had to–"

Then a loud, heavy THUMP!, like something crashing down.

"Oh shit," Shino murmured, distant somehow, as though he'd lowered the hand that held the phone.

"Shino? What happened?"

"Mom," his closer voice now altered with concern and fear, "Dad just fainted."

"_WHAT?_ What _happened_?"

"I – I dunno – he just passed out. He was exhausted, and – ouch! he's feverish… mom, what must I do? He's in such a sweat… mom? you still there?"

"Y-yes. Look, Shino – just put him on the couch, make him drink – is he conscious?"

"No."

"Well, try to fresh him up, one way or another – I'll be right there."

-

"How come I'm back here again?" Ran thought, standing before Shinichi's house, eighteen years after her first, and last, night there.

Eighteen years had gone by, with their lot of cries and laughs, deceptions and joys – and yet the house was still the same as it used to be, big and dark and heavy. The rain and darkness blurred the colours and details, but it seemed quite like it'd always had – but for the label on the mail box, which used to show "Kudo Family", and now showed "Kudo Shinichi", in this neat writing of his she would've recognized out of a thousand.

She could have been back on time, back to one autumn evening of eighteen years before, back to where the tale had begun – where it ended no, past and present both mixed up in only one sight, blurred with rain, like a ghost from long ago.

It had been so long and yet so short – like a dream passing on and vanishing in morning light.

She'd promised herself she wouldn't go and see him – see his happy existence, probably with a girl, though she knew he wasn't married; she didn't want to gatecrash his life, and look like a youth's mistake which comes back, years later, with a child, to the respectable man. She remembered all this as she pushed past the gate and advanced in the alley, the arguments she'd used against herself to convince herself to hide the truth to Shino and to everybody else, but to avail. It was, unfortunately, much too late to turn away.

She took a deep breath and knocked at the door. Hurried footsteps slammed close and Shino's worried face framed in the lit rectangle through the rain. For a brief moment, she thought about every time when she'd dreamed of him, opening this door like his own–

Then the instant passed away.

"Where is he?" she asked, closing her umbrella in the hall.

"In the sitting-room. He…"

She brushed past him, heading through the corridor without a slight hesitation. The door had been left open in her son's precipitation to go and open to her, and she could see, between the shadows, a dark figure lying on the couch.

Everyone of her feelings – concern, anger, fear, sadness, pain – all went blank, her soul and mind empty but for pure, bare sensation. She didn't cry, nor shout, she didn't even smile – she just felt, the rattling of the rain, the beating of hr heart, the overwhelming _presence_ of his self on the couch. There were memories yelling in her head, flashes of their childhood, friendship, love, the smiles and laughs and cries and shouts…

"Mom?" Shino asked worriedly, and reality went back with a _clash­_ – a reality that look _very_ much like a dream.

She advanced to the sofa, felt his forehead, his cheeks, his neck – her mind instinctively taking in the changes that had occurred since she'd last laid eyes on him – he was a bit taller, his shoulders were broader, his face thinner, he mustn't eat much, nor sleep a lot…

"Mom?"

"Did you make him drink?"

"Yes…"

Shinichi turned his head with a painful moan when she relieved his forehead of the cold tissue her son had put there.

"It's a cold," she said, "or the flu. Was he tired?"

"Exhausted," Shino said. "He was shivering." He shuddered himself, as though terrified. He probably was, Ran realized, and for the first time in the evening really thought about him. 'Till then the only thing that mattered had been Shinichi. But Shino must have been in such a state – going to meet his father and meeting him ill, seeing him fainting and herself, his mother, forced to come back in such a way, when he'd probably dreamt of their forming a nice little family from then on.

This is no book, she thought sadly, and this kind of thing doesn't happen. "He'll be better after a good night's rest. He needs to drink and be warmed up –" she opened a nearby cabinet and got out two blankets. Her son was about to ask how she knew they were there, then realized she knew this house by heart – everything everywhere. The Ran that now covered her former lover with the blankets wasn't the one he'd known for seventeen years – it was a young woman of eighteen, sweeping out from a past he should have been aware of, but hadn't.

Shinichi's face relaxed sensibly when she refreshed his cheeks and forehead, and he seemed to sleep more peacefully. His breath stopped coming out in little gasps and calmed, gradually, down. At that moment, he almost looked like he had o that morning eighteen years before, when Ran had woken up and found him sleeping by her side.

He turned to her son – _their_ son, it was now – and he grimaced as she switched from her romantic self to her karate champ self.

"Now," she said in that harsh voice that allowed no refusal, "you're going to have a lot to explain."

-

Shinichi was awoken by kitchen noises. He knew them well enough from having had to cook for himself for eighteen years. Saucepan rattling, fire sizzling, cupboard opening and closing, and a soft humming that didn't quite sound like the radio's.

He opened his eyes.

Sunlight was bathing the closed curtains, drawing white rectangles out of the floor. Dust was glittering in the room. Everything was grey.

He was lying on the couch, facing the bookcase and his desk. He'd had such a weird dream… a sad one... about a visit and rain and…

He sat up, noticing that he was covered by a blanket, and suddenly remarked Shino's deeply asleep figure in the nearest armchair.

He held still, half sitting half lying, and watched his sleeping son.

In such a situation, in any kind of book, he would have been pained, sad, sorrowful… but right at the moment he felt just as proud as any father does, faced with his new-born baby. A seventeen-years-old baby, in that case.

Seventeen years… that was abruptly a very long time. Seventeen years when they should have been together but hadn't. Seventeen years of not seeing his child growing, leaving childhood behind and becoming a man. He couldn't even imagine how Shino must have felt, growing fatherless, without even knowing his full name.

He rubbed his forehead painfully. What couldn't he remember… he'd passed out…

He then noticed the morning was cold and his son – his _son_, how both wonderful and aching it felt to say that – was sleeping with only his clothes on.

He stood up, a little dazzlingly, and was relieved to find he wasn't shivering like yesterday night. As he bent to cover Shino with the blankets, he studied his face with the greatest care, taking in every little detail. Something like he remain of a forgotten smile softened the hard corners of his mouth, and he shyly kissed his son's forehead.

A gasp from the left startled him and as his eyes instinctively turned his heart suddenly shocked with pain.

Ran was standing in the kitchen's doorway, holding a saucepan.

And what he'd felt the night before when hearing her voice on the phone was nothing – _nothing_ – next to what he now felt. She was older – she was 36 now – but still beautiful, though in a different way; her hair was a bit shorter than she used to wear it, her eyes were still a light shade of blue, her lips were half-open and her cheeks rosy – all of this he caught in a glimpse, along with the apron she'd tied round her waist and she spoon her left hand was seizing like a weapon – but most of all she was _there_, she could feel her presence like in no dream he'd ever had about her.

Their eyes locked for that still moment, then Ran hurried back inside the kitchen and he heard her putting the saucepan hastily down.

Advancing in the doorway, he could see her back turned to him, her shoulders somewhat shivering. She was afraid of the confrontation, he realized, as much as she was.

Yet, it was time to put an end to this situation, to achieve what should have been done eighteen years before.

He went in and closed the door.

-

Voices awoke Shino some time later.

First thing he remarked, opening his eyes, was the empty couch and the blankets now warming up his own sleep.

For a moment he remained in their comfortable embrace, pondering on the events of the night before.

His visit had been quite long at first – an hour or so – bur from the moment Ran had called him the situation had turned very quickly, like a film in slow motion switching to fast. He sighed, listening to the muffled voices from the kitchen. He couldn't hear what they were saying, just the tune of their conversation in the background. It was soft, humming, and he found himself hopeful.

He was beginning to feel rather sleepy again when suddenly the voices stopped. Silence invaded his ears like a drum, and he sensed more than ever the grey morning and the cold light. Loneliness struck his heart as unavoidable, and he thought about his father, locked there for eighteen years. Turning his eyes to the desk, he could almost see him writing by the weak light of a paraffin lamp and that of the fireplace.

Just… alone.

He blinked, and the vision faded in present's dust.

He couldn't resist standing and making for the kitchen's door, listening carefully. The words he overheard, however, startled him so much he stepped back involuntarily.

"Marry me, Ran…"

Tears invaded Shino's eyes inexorably and he hastily wiped them off. A lump at the back of his throat almost kept him from breathing, but his heart, cold for years, seemed to be suddenly warming up.

He opened the door an inch.

Ran and Shinichi were embracing tightly, both laughing and, in Ran's case – he couldn't see his father's face – crying. Everything in their hug suggested such a meeting between past and present, such an awaited reunion.

The door opened wider. It creaked, and Ran, lifting her gaze, saw her son over Shinichi's shoulder.

He was perfectly aware of the tears forming again at the corners of his eyes, of the clumsy smile his lips outlined, but he forgot all about them when his father turned to him.

Ran and Shinichi looked almost as young as they had, on that picture from eighteen years ago. They extended their free arms towards their son, and he walked in their embrace.

And time, which had stopped long ago, started up again.

**-**

**So, as I said, there's going to be a prequel, maybe two – one for each of them – and probably a sequel too; I can't wait to see Heiji and Kazuha's reaction. Still hesitating as to introducing Kaito and Aoko as well, though. As for the parents, or rather grandparents by now, you should see something like Kogoro and maybe Eri but I can't really tell you when or where.**


End file.
